A Summer of Cricket

Introduction

This exhibition captured the spirit of cricket as it has been played and watched by generations of Australians over their summer holidays. The memory and anticipation of warm and relaxed days listening to Test cricket commentary on the radio evokes a nostalgia for simpler, more innocent times.

Similarly, in the realm of collecting, be it cricket memorabilia, cricket cards or cricket stamps, the individual collector savours, reflects and takes pleasure in finding and organising these small graphic items which in their forms and colours evoke the impressions and fascinations of youth.

A Summer of Cricket was a comprehensive display of art and design from the National Philatelic Collection illustrating the sport of cricket on Australian stamps. It also included cricket stamps of the world from Australia Post's Universal Postal Union collection and rare philatelic cricket items loaned by specialist cricket collector, Mr Noel Almeida.

For the newcomer seeking some context in which to understand the passion for the game, images of nineteenth-century cricket engravings and twentieth-century photographs had been loaned by the Picture Collection of the State Library of Victoria. These images captured subjects from batting and bowling on the beaches of Gallipoli to beach cricket at Sorrento, showing the role of cricket in the lives of Australians over the last 150 years.